"Where the hell is Little Orphan Annie today?" screamed a man's voice over
the telephone. Senior Editor Ross MacGarble wiped a worried brow, tried to
soothe his angry caller, jumped into his high powered car, and rushed two
days of comic strips to his indignant subscriber. He explained patiently
his paper's policy of omitting comic strips that are deemed not in the best
public interest.

In another community one recent Friday morning, a pathetic 72 year old widow
became so nauseated after reading a Morrie Ryskind column, she had to be
rushed to a hospital and kept on oxygen and intravenous fluids for three
days before she could return home in time to collect her unemployment insurance.
Significantly, this gentle oldster was kept waiting in the emergency room
for one hour and ten minutes while interns were feverishly transfusing an
A.M.A. official who had suffered an inconsequential gastric hemorrhage while
reading Walter Lippmann over a second cup of coffee laced with an expensive
imported brandy.

All over the nation in thousands of communities Americans are becoming more
and more disturbed about the disruptive state into which their news media
have fallen. News and factual information, except in a few weighty papers
like the venerable Boston Globe and in magazines like Playboy, have been
pushed aside to make way for more advertising copy and a bumper crop of news
analysts and GNP charts. It is estimated that there are 34,251 communities
across the nation with no newspapers of their own. Citizens are forced to
depend on news filtered through large metropolitan dailies which often arrive
12 to 14 hours after coming off their presses, or on the unsatisfactory blurred
images and sounds emanating from faulty television sets. With the import
of excellent Japanese transistor radios drastically curtailed by restrictive
legislation, many must get their news only from poorly made, mass-manufactured
American imitations, that often go dead in the middle of the weather-girl
report. Hundreds of cities no longer get the Sunday night Ed Sullivan show
because of "selective" programming on TV. It is reported that as many as
22 of the nation's newspapers even do not carry the column of Presidential
Award winner, Ralph McGill.

Americans in every state are concerned about their news media: the poor quality
of news interpretation too many of us receive, frightening differences in
editorial points of view, erratic and delinquent newspaper delivery, blackouts
in TV and radio programming, disinterested and materialistic editors and
publishers, rapidly rising costs. All are serious complaints.

Costs are skyrocketing. Price increases up to 500% are common. Afternoon
dailies that once sold for 2 cents now cost 5 cents or more: Sunday papers
have gone from 5 and 10 cents to as high as 25 and 30 cents; newsmagazines,
once bought for 10 cents, now sell for 35 or 50 cents. Newspapers that used
to arrive in time for an early breakfast now appear in mid-morning or not
at all. The prices of radio and television sets have risen precipitously;
repair bills have reached astronomical figures.

Dissension and unrest are widespread throughout the country among ordinary
citizens, and within the news profession itself, about the materialistic
attitude and concern with money matters evidenced by many in the communications
industry. There is a documented report of one prominent national figure who
has managed to amass a fortune in millions by the manipulation of television
monopolies and subsidies. Walter P. Clambake, the renowned television
commentator, reportedly receives an income in excess of $500,000 yearly for
his news programs and various sideline endorsements. Winken and Blinken,
whose popular news program, "Ham on Wry," got the nod in top ratings several
years ago, spend their vacations in plush resorts at home and abroad, and
drive around in fleets of air-conditioned Lincoln Continentals. "I get a
lousy 70 bucks a week;" complains Griswold Sobbins, "for two hours every
day on Cap'n Blotto's Kiddie Korral and drive a second-hand Volkswagen, while
some of them crumbs are hauling down $100,000 a year for regurgitating undigested
news."

Editors formerly dedicated to preserving liberty and freedom of the press
are now too busy taking polls, philosophising, and travelling about the country
on expense-paid junkets - trends that threaten to undermine a once noble
calling. Shamus T. Ginsberg, now of the Institute of Public Information and
Deception, in a study of American newspapers, found that one editor was away
from his desk 286 days out of the last 365. Ginsberg noted that in the recent
election 45.1% of the nation's editors supported the Republican ticket. Says
Hobart J. Perkins, proprietor of eastern Vermont's largest newsstand, "This
kind of irresponsibility has got to be stopped, or we will all end up without
Social Security."

In a report based on six months of research in thirty communities from coast
to coast talking to publishers, editors, and newsboys, it was found that
92% of them were disturbed about deficiencies in the news profession. "Things
are getting out of hand" observed publisher Herschel S. Blight when interviewed
at the Thoroughbred yearling auction, where he had just purchased two colts
for $180,000 to add to his modest racing stable. "Some of these writers are
demanding salaries as high as $50 a month for pecking out a weekly column
that my grandson could write better."

The communications industry as a whole is also worried about its public image.
Many national associations and guilds of radio, television and publishing
that used to hold their yearly conventions in customary intellectual and
cultural centers like New Orleans' famed Vieux Carre, Miami Beach and Acapulco,
now have taken to scheduling meetings in the Bible belt, often in conjunction
with Billy Graham revivals. Phineas Frugg, a director of the Publishers Welfare
Society, is pleased with his organization's efforts to remold its public
relations: "It's high time we learned that all uplift is not confined to
the tassle-twirlers on Bourbon Street"

But not all newsmen agree. Quentin Groots, famed war correspondent, voiced
this complaint about the industry's new preoccupation with decency: "Where
are the old rum-pots and free-loaders of yesteryear? The public used to respect
the disreputable, two-fisted, chain-smoking editor who could toss off two
columns of copy in a drunken stupor while being held up to his typewriter
by a couple of floozies. Now they all want to go respectable. They worry
about cancer of the lung. Security is the watchword. They spend all their
time lecturing to Leagues of Women Voters and university forums, or else
they are up in Washington as subsidized advisors smoking filter-tips and
sipping watered Martinis." Groots still proudly wears the lapel button of
the nation's third highest military award. The decoration was bestowed for
gallantry in action above and beyond the call of duty when Grools singlehandedly
overcame a platoon of marauding GI's and rescued five cases of champagne
destined for an Army Commander's surprise birthday party at Caserta during
the bitter Italian campaign of World War II.

Criticism of the way newsworthy events are presented and interpreted is prevalent
throughout the land. Gomer S. Cringe, president of the new National Council
for Moderation of Extremism, finds a deplorable lack of quality in present
day news analyses. "Facts are all right in their place," says Cringe, "but
the public nowadays has had the benefit of progressive education and is impatient
with eighteenth century reporting. They don't care if Susie Jones was hit
over the head with an axe and cashed in. They need to understand her lack
of motivation and the sociologic implications involved. The newspaper that
sticks to reporting uninterpreted news is living in prehistoric times." Samuel
Finke, chairman of Americans for Serfdom, says, "The industry needs more
men, the caliber of Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in it. Men who are at home in
the discotheques and who can lead us to greatness."

"Things have certainly gone to pot when a former President has to come out
and criticize the industry in public," says retired syndicated columnist
Wesbrook Haggler complaining about the poor quality of news distortion. "The
smear and scatter technique used by some of these juveniles masquerading
as columnists would not have raised an eyebrow in my day."

Bliss Gallupin, astute young columnist of a large southern daily and recent
winner of the Red China Fair Play in Reporting Award, is upset about the
hatemongers who fill their columns with personal piques and vilifications
calculated to influence the reading public. "It's disgusting. The lengths
to which some of these unwashed extremist sympathizers went in defending
the obviously incompetent Republican candidate during the last campaign speak
poorly for our profession. Although I have been criticized for never descending
to calumny and trying to maintain a tolerant middle-of-the-road policy, I
have heard about two of these so-called columnists who were depraved enough
that they once peddled marijuana to unwed mothers. On several occasions I
saw another one of these loathsome hacks enter that same men's room in the
Y.M.C.A. basement where the Goldwater-Miller fascist supporters tried to
frame loveable Walter Jenkins."

Study after study has shown that a shocking shortage of trained personnel
is one of the communications industry's greatest problems. Journalism courses
at most of the nation's high schools report a dropout rate of 60% or more.
Many oddball college eccentrics, once a prime source of talent for the nation's
news industry, are now attracted to more rewarding fields like psychoanalysis
and the ministry; others prefer to remain in university centers where they
can continue post-graduate training in establishing meaningful relationships
with members of the opposite sex.

In spite of its manpower shortage, alarming discriminatory practices continue
to exist throughout the communications field. Less than one percent of the
country's females write news columns. The number of Negro editors in the
country is appallingly small. "I won't say there is racial prejudice," says
journalism major, Cadmium Green, "but when I applied for an editorial desk
at the local newspaper, I was told they had no vacancies." And the situation
is even worse in the specialty of television news analysis, which seems to
be in the hands of a tightly organized, exclusive group.

No aspect of the profession seems free of blemish. In one area a state's
largest newspaper, which professes to have the world's greatest sports staff
and sports coverage, gets thousands of calls each fall weekend from irate
readers who complain that they can find nothing in the sports section except
accounts of the local football game. "Every Sunday I'm waiting to see who
won in the sixth at Bowie, and all I can find is football games and ten pictures
of the same play where some jerk is catching a pass," moans Elbert T. Hotwalk,
a disenchanted subscriber. Hotwalk also did not discover that this year's
Olympic games were over until three weeks after the last gold medal was
presented. "Them sophomores was too busy describing belly serieses and averaging
punt returns to worry about Olympians."

Aging pundit Waldrup Slippshod, the wise and revered dean of the nation's
political writers, sees only trouble ahead for the communications industry
unless steps are taken to reverse the present trends. "We have lost our
direction," says Slippshod. "it is the responsibility of all of us who are
the straight thinkers and intellectuals of our profession to lead the way
back to sanity. The disturbing rise of rationality and dissent among the
nation's journalists has exerted a stultifying effect on our progress toward
the Great Society and Ultimate Oblivion. It is obvious, even to the unlettered,
that sinister forces are at work within our ranks creating a climate of reason
and distrust, and this can only lead to a national disaster unless we, the
leaders in enlightenment, face up to our challenge squarely. We must adopt
a firm but punitive attitude toward those divisive elements that call for
individualism and outmoded constitutionality. The sincere but misguided
extremists of the near-Left, mid-Left, Right and Center must be directed
back to sensible middle-of-the-road moderation and socially-conscious
conservative liberalism. They must be made to realize that the responsible
members of the news profession, first and foremost, have the public interest
at heart. Our duty to the people of this great nation must always be to insist,
perhaps on penalty of federal reprimand, that the dissemination of news be
carefully screened and intelligently edited so as to promote a satisfying
uniformity of opinion that will guide and move us forward as a truly united
America. Only when all dissent is tranquilized, and only when all of the
communications media are brought into a harmony that speaks with one voice
in the defense of Liberty, shall we have achieved success and realized the
glorious motto of our founding fathers that underlies all Freedom, `E Pluribus
Unum'."

So says Slippshod. And millions of Americans across this great continent
know in their hearts he is right; that he speaks with a wisdom that confirms
his senility. If the communications industry faces up to its challenge, we
will solve our massive problems of news dissemination and emerge from this
troubled period with better information for all.

If the industry stubbornly fails to meet the challenge, inevitably, necessary
changes must be imposed, and the destiny of a once great profession will
slip from the grasp of its hard working members into the unsympathetic hands
of others.